From our US friends

Hello all,     The December meeting of the Experimental Cuisine Collective will take place on Monday, December 10, from 4 to 6 p.m. at La Boîte à Epices, 724 11th Avenue (at 51st Street), in NYC (please note the different location!).  In this session, La Boîte founder and owner Lior Lev Sercarz will talk about his work with spices, from sourcing to blending the finest of spices from around the world. He will also discuss agricultural and legislative issues that affect the flavor of spices. He and food photographer Thomas Schauer will also give us a preview of Lior's book The Art of Blending, ahead of its official release the next day.    Lior Lev Sercarz was raised in Israel and trained as a chef in France, where he was introduced to the fine art of spice blending by Olivier Roellinger. He moved to New York in 2002 to cook for Daniel Boulud, and left the restaurant kitchen in 2006 to work with spices full time. He has since created blends for some of the world's best chefs under the label La Boîte à Epices. In 2011, he opened a Manhattan store and art gallery, where he blends and sells his spices and a line of sweet-savory biscuits. He is the author of The Art of Blending: Stories & Recipes from La Boîte's Spice Journey, published in December 2012. Please RSVP at ecc122012.eventbrite.com. A link is also posted on our website. If you RSVP and can no longer make it, please let me know right away so that your seat can be released---space is very limited! Thank you!  All my best, Anne  ---- Anne E. McBride Director, Experimental Cuisine Collective

ABOUT THE EXPERIMENTAL CUISINE COLLECTIVE The Experimental Cuisine Collective is a working group that assembles scholars, scientists, chefs, writers, journalists, performance artists, and food enthusiasts. We launched in April 2007, as a result of the collaboration of Kent Kirshenbaum of the chemistry department and Amy Bentley of the nutrition, food studies, and public health department at New York University with Chef Will Goldfarb of WillPowder. Our overall aim is to develop a broad-based and rigorous academic approach that employs techniques and approaches from both the humanities and sciences to examine the properties, boundaries, and conventions of food. Visit the ECC online at www.experimentalcuisine.com.